


the gravity of collapsing stars

by kotaface (aveyune23)



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Moving house is hard, One Shot, Post-Advent Children, Resolved Sexual Tension, Smut, based on a prompt, dedicated to the memory of one (1) very brave lawn chair, domestic!Cloti
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:06:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25255111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aveyune23/pseuds/kotaface
Summary: “Why did we decide to move in June?” she says, a slight whine in her voice. To be honest, he’d been wondering that exact same thing a few minutes ago. But that thought’s flown from his brain and been replaced with the overwhelming and rather painful reminder that they’ve barely touched each other in the last month.Saving the world didn't even hurt this much.Cloud and Tifa take advantage of some much-needed alone time after the Big Move.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 37
Kudos: 155





	the gravity of collapsing stars

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to everyone over on Discord for the support! I hadn't planned on my second contribution to the fandom being PWP/domestic smut, but here I am...  
> (Prompt from @Rando29)

Everything hurts. 

He collapses into a lawn chair they’d been smart enough to unpack early on, boneless and drained. The burden of disassembling, sorting, and packing their lives into box after box combined with the kids being out of school for the summer meant that the last month had been non-stop. They’d moved the small stuff one car-load at a time, painted walls and mediated endless pre-teen squabbling about who would get what room, prepped their businesses to be closed for the entire week they’d set aside to make the final Big Move. 

Today was the last of it. The largest pieces of furniture, the beds and dressers and kitchen table and chairs, are all in their designated rooms. Everything they own is now officially in their new home. The kids are crashed in their new, _separate_ rooms. Boxes are still stacked everywhere, waiting to be unpacked tomorrow and the days after that. 

He groans. As fascinating as it is to learn that there is, in fact, a bottom to his stamina barrel, he can’t be bothered to care. Saving the world didn’t even hurt this much.

The thought brings to mind a certain chain-smoking airship pilot and a short huff of laughter leaves him. 

“What?”

He cracks open an eye and sees Tifa standing over him, still in the t-shirt and shorts she’s been wearing all day, her hair in a haphazard pile on the top of her head and _Shiva_ , a bottle of beer in her hand. She’s holding it out to him, and he accepts it with a grateful sigh. It’s ice cold, and he doesn’t have to wonder how because she sets a small cooler on the grass between them before she drops into the other lawn chair and lets her head fall back. The groan that leaves her makes him smirk.

“Just thinking about how we’re too old for this shit.”

She chuckles. “Y’know, I was thinking the same thing. When did that happen?”

He takes a swig off the beer. The bite of hops on the back of his tongue takes the edge off his exhaustion. “No idea,” he replies. 

She hums in agreement. He looks over at her as she leans forward to grab a beer for herself. After she pops it open on the edge of the cooler she takes a long drink, sighs, and falls back into the chair. He watches her for a moment while her eyes are closed, lets his eyes roam over her flushed skin and heavy limbs. And then she presses her beer against the side of her neck, and the noise she makes…

His exhaustion disappears in an instant. All of his attention is suddenly focused on the line of condensation from the beer bottle that’s slipping down her throat.

“Why did we decide to move in June?” she says, a slight whine in her voice. To be honest, he’d been wondering that exact same thing a few minutes ago. But that thought’s flown from his brain and been replaced with the overwhelming and rather painful reminder that they’ve barely touched each other in the last month. Between the process of moving and wrangling the kids, they haven’t had the time or energy to do much beyond kiss each other good night. Even when they did manage to carve a few minutes of privacy out of their busy days, they were always interrupted. As frustrating as it’s been, he’s been doing a pretty good job at ignoring it. But now, with the move technically over, and the kids theoretically _(hopefully)_ fast asleep in their rooms…

He’s done ignoring it.

She must feel his eyes on her, because she turns her head and meets his stare. He sees her breath catch the tiniest bit, the way her chest rises and her cheeks flush, and he knows it's not from the summer evening heat. She shifts in her chair, and he doesn’t miss how her thighs press together briefly before she cocks her head at him. Her smirk and half-lidded eyes are anything but innocent when she asks, “Can I help you?”

She says it like it’s a challenge, but he’s very aware that it’s a bluff. She surrendered the second she saw the look he was giving her. He plays along anyway. He knows how much she likes pretending to put up a fight. 

“Dunno,” he says. His tone is flat, the way it used to be when he was just a mercenary looking for cash and not attachments. Then he takes a drink of beer and locks eyes with her and taunts in a low voice, “Can you?”

She stares him down for a minute. He doesn’t look away. Takes another drink to hide his smirk while he watches the debate going on behind her eyes, like she’s contemplating changing the game. Eventually she takes a long drink off her beer and sets it down in the grass and stands. It’s barely two steps to his chair, but she takes her time, stretching her arms over her head so that her shirt rides up a bit, exposing a sliver of skin. He resists the urge to reach out and yank her to him. Instead he lets her pad across the grass between them, watches with a smirk and racing heart as she plucks the beer from his hand and takes a sip, sets it aside, then plants her hands on the arms of his chair and leans down. She hovers over him, wets her lips with her tongue and then bites down. His eyes drop to her mouth, and he can’t help the breath that stutters past his lips. She breathes in and all the air between them disappears. The resulting vacuum crackles for one heartbeat, two, and then it collapses and they’re crashing.

Her mouth is hungry against his, and he reaches out and grabs the back of her thighs and pulls her onto his lap. It’s only her grace that keeps them steady, her body automatically shifting so that the chair doesn’t give out from underneath them. The result has her straddling him, pressing against him just so. Her hands slide over his shoulders and tangle at the nape of his neck, his fingers slip beneath her shirt and dig into her waist, and he groans into her mouth when she rolls her hips. He nips at her smirking lips, admonishing her cruelty, but she keeps on smiling until it’s a grin and she manages to snag his lip between her teeth, succeeding where he had failed. He growls and tilts his head back just enough to feel the tug, and when she releases him he opens his eyes in time to see her face transform. Her grin has vanished. In its place are swollen lips, parted and panting, and heavy-lidded eyes dark and deep enough to drown in.

 _There it is,_ he thinks. _White flag._

She’s burning against him and every nerve in his body is singing in response. He puts enough space between them so that they can catch their breath, though he’s not sure why he bothers. They just popped the top off a month’s worth of repressed tension -- the only way this ends is riding the wave until they’re good and spent. He knows it. And judging by the way her hips shift against his, she knows it, too. So he drops his mouth to her throat and scrapes his teeth across her pulse and grins at the little mewl it elicits. She arches into him, digs half-moons into his arms as he trails wet kisses down the column of her neck, his palms sliding up her back, over her ribs, thumbs featherlight just below the underwire of her bra. That they don’t need explicit signals for things like divesting each other of their shirts is a testament to how long they’ve been together. One moment her fingers are twisted in the fabric over his chest, the hem of hers bunched in his fists, and the next they’re breaking apart for the exact amount of time it takes to yank their tops off and no longer.

He’s dimly aware of the chair creaking beneath them, but doesn’t give it any thought. And why would he? He’s eye-level with the best pair of breasts on Gaia and he hasn’t touched them in a _month._ Tifa’s already reaching behind her to unhook her bra, and then that barrier is gone too but he doesn’t get the chance to worship her properly because she’s pulling him up into an open-mouthed kiss. The press of her bare chest on his has him groaning into her mouth, and her hips roll in response, then roll again, starting up a slow rhythm that turns any coherent thoughts he might have had to smoke. She’ll kill him if she keeps that up, and there’s a part of him that shouts _then we’ll die happy_. But it’s been too long since he’s had her, and dammit, now that he does, he’s going to have her the _right way_ _._

He buries his fingers in her hair and pulls just enough to make her bend back, spreads his other hand across the small of her back and pins her against him, exposed and completely at his mercy. All she can do is watch as he sets his mouth to her chest; she grasps at his arms and shoulders as he trails his lips over one rise and then the other. The humid air settles heavy on her skin, mixes with the heat of his breath when he closes his mouth around the hardened peak of her left breast. He hears her whimper, feels her press up into his mouth and pull on his hair. He smirks against her and pays the same attention to her right, not giving her what she wants. 

“You asshole,” she gasps, knowing exactly what he’s doing. “Don’t be a tease.”

He looks up from between her breasts, feigning innocence, and uses the hand he has on her back to hold her down as he grinds up into her. Dangerous move, because it sets off fireworks in his brain, but the way her jaw drops and the noise she makes is absolutely worth it. 

So, like an idiot, he does it again. 

And again. And again, pulling another perfect sound from her each time. At some point he releases the vice grip he’s got on her and rests his hands on her hips instead, more than happy to help her move the way she wants to. His head falls back and he watches as each press and roll and shift of her body over his translates to expressions on her face. She’s strung taut above him, her breath coming in short pants. She can barely keep her eyes on him anymore. He’s a bit stunned when he realizes that she might come right there, grinding on him through two layers of clothes.

(That one part of him was lying before. _Now_ he could die happy.) 

He murmurs her name, trying to get her to look at him. She doesn’t at first, only picks up her pace. He groans with her, says her name again, and when she finally opens her eyes, desperation and that little hint of fear that she won’t make it shine back at him. He shifts down in the chair to give her a better angle and braces himself to stay as steady as he can, letting her lead, letting her find and take what she needs. Her breath keens and hiccups, her eyes squeeze shut, and she’s so fucking beautiful, so he tells her, and it makes her face screw up, her mouth fall open, his name squeaking out, begging --

“C’mon Tifa,” he tells her. “I got you. Come for me.”

Above him, Tifa tenses and cries out, squeezing her thighs around him and gripping his shoulders so tight it makes him curse. Her hips jerk once or twice more before she falls forward onto his chest. As he wraps his arms around her, letting her catch her breath, his ears pick up a weird groaning noise that’s slowly rising in pitch. By the time he remembers that dim observation he couldn’t be bothered with earlier, it’s too late -- there’s a sharp screech of bending metal and the lawn chair gives out from under them.

When he can finally suck in a breath the first thing that comes out of his mouth is a very heartfelt “ _fuck,_ ” followed by a groan and a half-hearted “you all right?” Half-hearted, because she’s laughing her ass off. Head thrown back, face red, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, hysterical. He glares at her, mumbles, “Ha ha, real funny,” and shifts around in stiff starts and stops to pull the crumpled remains of the chair out from under him. When he’s finally lying on grass and grass only, he takes a deep breath and lets it out in a soundless “fuck.” Tifa is still laughing somewhere to his left, and it’s not until he turns to glare at her again that he realizes she really _is_ hysterical. 

He’s across the grass and pulling her against him in an instant. “Shit, Teef, you okay?” He’s scanning her for injuries, any signs that she’s hurt. But aside from a bit of grass stuck to her shoulders, she looks fine. It's just that she’s giggling in fits, her expression fluttering between distress and humor, calming down briefly until she looks at him and starts cackling all over again. She’s gasping for air, and he’s starting to worry that she hit her head, starts calculating how to get her shirt back on and her ass to a clinic without waking up the kids, when she finally manages to squeak out, “You should see your face!”

He jerks, stunned, and promptly drops her back to the grass. It only makes her laugh harder.

“Fuck you, too,” he grumbles, shaking his head in disbelief. Post-orgasm, blunt-force shock. She’s lost her mind. She confirms as much when she rolls onto her stomach and looks at him with bright eyes.

“I’d love it if you would,” she says, her voice honey smooth and sweet, like she’s drunk. The little giggle that follows somehow makes it worse.

Except as sore as his ass is, he’s finding it really difficult to stay annoyed with her. Maybe it’s because seconds before the fucking chair gave out, she’d come so hard he’d almost lost it, too. _Almost._ And that _almost_ is still evident to the both of them. Maybe it’s because of the look she’s giving him, the way the shine in her eyes broadcasts that she’s not done with him yet. Maybe it’s because it’s just occurred to him how easy it would be to pin her to the damp grass and fuck her so hard that the only sound she’d be capable of making is his name.

It doesn’t matter, because once his mind’s made up, everything slides back into place. Her giggles stop, she’s on her back, and his mouth is on hers hard enough to bruise. All the urgency that’d he’d tamped down earlier comes roaring back, and it takes nothing to get her panting again, to get him hard and aching. All of a sudden there’s the scramble to get her shorts off, the harsh kisses and bites he leaves on the insides of her thighs, her nails on his scalp, his shoulders, his back. She cuts crescents into the skin of his hips when she helps him shove his pants down, soothes them with dew-damp palms that drift over his ass and around, where she takes him into her hand and drags his gaze back to hers. 

And just like that he’s frozen, caught in her wine-red gaze. It’s all too easy to remember how that look used to make his gut roil with shame, with a feeling of inadequacy so sharp he ran fast and far away to escape it. He’d been such an idiot. He’d wasted so much time, robbed them of so much --

“Hey.”

He blinks and she’s smiling up at him, her hand on his cheek. 

“I got you,” she whispers. “I’m here. We’re both here, okay?”

He sighs, nods, leans down and kisses her and shoves down the voice that tries to say he doesn’t deserve her, because fuck, yes, he does. He deserves her and he wants her and he needs her and he loves her --

He shifts, she slides, they gasp and settle and sigh and okay, now. _Now._

He catches his breath, kisses her once, and starts moving, slow at first, but the exhaustion from the last month starts creeping over him. He takes the fact that she’s already clenching around him as permission to let go, pins her wrists and grips her thigh and she’s nodding at him as he drives into her, _please, Cloud, yes --_

It doesn’t take much. She comes undone and he follows, and he’s grateful that she’s wrapped around him, because he’s not entirely sure he would’ve been able to catch himself. He’d love nothing more than to roll over and pass out, but the scratch of grass on his knees isn’t doing him any favors. He pushes up, groaning, and she giggles. He can’t bring himself to even roll his eyes, because she looks a mess, red cheeks and hair everywhere. There’s a bit of grass stuck to the crease of her neck, next to a patch of pale purple that is guaranteed to be very obvious come morning. She’s fucking beautiful. And she’s his. 

It still staggers him, sometimes.

“C’mon,” he groans, and gets himself standing. Every part of him protests, but he makes it. He holds out his hand and helps her to her feet. She whimpers and curses as she pulls her shorts up, but she doesn’t attempt to put her shirt back on. He can’t blame her. He feels like he’s eighty.

“Please tell me you put sheets on the bed,” he asks as they hobble toward the house.

Something like panic crosses her face. “If I said no…?”

“You’re the worst.”

“Liar. You love me.”

He catches her around the waist before she can go any further and pulls her close. “And you love me.” It’s not a question. It hasn’t been for a long time.

She nods and kisses him, and it stops him hurting long enough to make it up the stairs and onto their bed. He’s asleep before he hits the sheets.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it! Comments are never expected but always appreciated. Thanks for reading!
> 
> ~Kota


End file.
